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Amazon CloudWatch vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (20th), Cloud Monitoring Software (15th)
SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (6th), Active Directory Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.1%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.1%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor1.1%
Amazon CloudWatch1.1%
Other97.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Has provided reliable monitoring and alerting through extensive metric tracking and dashboard configuration
Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch. We are also integrating Grafana with the application itself to get the application data and logs. Alternatively, there is AWS Kinesis and Glue where you can scrape the logs and have visualization, but a more easy option is Grafana. If you want to get a proper visual representation to see what is happening, then you need to integrate a third-party tool. Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool.
NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility
From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Most of it's around optimizing utilization, their cloud utilization. They're making sure that they're getting the most out of their in-cloud environments and their instances. Making sure that there's no strange behavior in the environment."
"It is very easy to use; as a monitoring tool, whenever your system experiences issues, it will notify you and is directly linked to your service."
"The most valuable features of Amazon CloudWatch are metrics, dashboards, alarms, logs, events, logs insight, and application insights."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is reliability."
"Amazon CloudWatch's best feature stems from its ability to monitor app performance."
"The alarms are one thing I love about AWS CloudWatch. It has alerts that notify us when resource use is approaching the limit."
"We use Amazon CloudWatch for logging."
"The solution gives us very good real-time data."
"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."
"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."
"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."
"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."
"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."
"The product integrates with Remedy."
"It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization."
"Management Console - Managing service to each server enrolled in the Solarwinds is much easier. Using a web base console, you can control your service much convenient way. There is no need to login remotely. It save a lot of time and effort."
 

Cons

"We find this product lacking and this is why we want to look for a new service that can cover our needs."
"Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming; it requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing, because they have a premium version, but it's not really a premium version. It's just an enhanced monitoring version, and it can be a bit expensive depending on your usage."
"What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."
"For monitoring applications or for APM, CloudWatch has some limitations. You cannot monitor application performance from CloudWatch, and you have to go for a third-party tool."
"It would be beneficial for CloudWatch to provide an API interface and some kind of custom configuration."
"The solution's auto-scaling could be improved."
"The solution could benefit from a price decrease."
"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."
"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us."
"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."
"The setup was complex. We had local support to assist us."
"The major concern in the product revolves around application performance monitoring since end-to-end application monitoring is not possible with the tool."
"They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features."
"One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap solution."
"We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month."
"What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable. When the rate of data collection is done the price will increase. The price is less than other solutions."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing is average."
"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."
"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."
"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
"The product is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Transportation Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
13%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visual...
What is your primary use case for Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch is a very small service that AWS provides. It is a monitoring service for applications within the AWS cloud, and we can integrate external applications using the APIs or SDK. The ...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SolarWinds SAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.